Benvenuto

Benvenuto su questo blog!

mercoledì 14 giugno 2017

SPECULATION ON THE DEVOTION?

In our time everyone has to keep his eyes open continually because the risk of alteration is
always around the corner. In institutional Churches it’s now difficult to find
rest, spiritual peace, since they are too much invaded by strange things ...

A recent great "inter-confessional" new – that concerns both
Catholicism and Orthodoxy - was the translation of St. Helena Empress’ relics from Venice,
where they were guarded, in Greece. Relics remained in Greece from May to June
(2017) and then returned to the lagoon town.

If this is made to honor to a Saint who ideally unites Christianity, I will certainly not object
to it.

And I do not oppose or contradict the popular spontaneity that sees in the
relics a way to relate to God who sanctified the Saint of which we have the
mortal remains.

The point is not here. The point is another that I summarize in the title of
this article: in the case of St. Helena relics there was speculation?

The lower clergy
and the people can not, in fact, know the truth about St. Helena's Venetian
relics, but how high prelates and organizers may not have known at least
something? If they did not even know it, how could they have immediate faith in
the Venetian relics of this saint?

The truth is that
these relics, which have had a triumphal reception in Greece, for which various
events have been organized (and events are expensive especially in crisis’ time!),
are very dubious, indeed very likely false.

The alleged
remnants of Saint Helena were honored by State honors, such as the mummy of a
pharaoh brought to Paris for scientific examinations, years ago. The difference
is that while the mummy was authentic, the body of St. Helena is probably not
at all.

I wish nobody, though informed about this, considered it pointless, since it
was now important to start the organizational machine with the inevitable
practical benefits (let us think about, for instance, the "ecumenical" benefits
between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, just not to think of other very practical
benefits ...). Oh yes, all right but ... can this be done with relics that are
most likely false? If the end justifies the means, yes. But can the Church ever
use this machiavellian system?

I have informed
someone in the high ranks of clergy about this question. I only had silence as
response. I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment, a shame and embarrassment
that, however, other people should have felt ...

I detect the overwhelming evidence of all this from a
report on the remains of Saint Helena, drawn by two scholars of great
scientific reliability: Corrain and Capitanio. I quote the report’s text
in the essential part:

«The urn [of St.
Elena] is in the Borromeo chapel, under the altar, with a glass lid, simply
leaning (the hooks are broken or missing). A reconnaissance had been made by dr.
Ulisse Canziani on October 22, 1929. The following inventory was made: a skull in a bad
conditions, 5 vertebrae and fragments; 4 ribs and fragments; handlebar and
sternum; bone sacred with sacralization of the fifth lumbar and iliac bones; the
left and right scapula; omers; the left and right radio split into
two halves; the left ulna and the upper third of the right; 6 bones of the carp
and 4 phalanxes of the hand; the femurs and the roots; the left tibia; the
heels; an astragalo; a scaffold and a phalanx of the foot.The doctor measured the length of the six long bones of the
limbs, obtaining a height of 153 cm, modest but not too much, for a woman. By
reviewing the figures of the individual pairs of bones, we have come to notice
the low variability between these pairs with regard to stature data (151,2 - 152,7 cm): belonging to the same subject».

The report, therefore, indicates in the beginning what had been discovered
in 1929: a skull and some bones. The situation recently observed is very different. The report, in fact, continues
as follows:

«Compared to the
inventory of a time, we have the only remains of the skull enclosed within a
mask, silvery, that we opened with difficulty; the rest of the skeleton was
enclosed in a pewter container with thick boards. A beautiful brocade dress could
hide the misfortune long enough, that is until our reconnaissance. The pewter
container of elongated shape almost to simulate the body of the saint had been
(perhaps recently) torn from the feet. There
was nothing inside it!».

So now only a skull remains of the alleged relics of Saint Helena; everything else has
disappeared long ago! The so-called "body" made up in the venerated
urn in Greece must have been a coated doll! The veneration to Saint Helena's
body turned to a doll packed with precious (and expensive!) clothes.

But let's see the scientific observation on the skull, the only thing left:

«Let's say
something about the remains of the skull in bad conditions, which we have
discovered. Mummified skin covers a part of the face. The age of death could be
senile: dental wear to the pulp cavity of the M2 and M3 left; completely
missing sutures, even internally. There is
some doubt about the feminine gender: small face, infantile, with a front probably
bent. But we recognize that the supraorbital edge is coarse, that the skull is
rather thick and that the nuclides and the inion are more than discrete [...]».

The scholar
Corrain preferred to blur very much his statements but from another member of
the same recognition commission at the time when the skull was examined, I know
that the skull attributed to Saint
Helena is male with probability 70-75% because the front is not bent, as it is
in the opposite female case. The scholar, in fact, does not say that the skull
is bumped but that "probably" should
have been, if it was female.

In the Middle Ages there was a lot of pseudo-relics, and everyone ought to know this. Similarly, a little bit of caution should be exercised when a certain identity is
attributed to mortal remains, especially when these remains have had a very
tumultuous historical path, such as the supposed relics of Saint Helena (1).
To give this kind of assurance, selling to the people the idea that what is being seen is
surely the body of Saint Helena (when most probably the only thing left, the
skull, is not authentic) leads us to suspect a certain simple-mindedness a lot
of naivety and perhaps somebody with bad faith. If there is bad faith there may
be someone who has taken advantage of it.

The will to promote "ecumenism among Churches" with probable false
relics really makes us think about speculation.

Of course, in a "plastic era" like ours, no one is surprised that pseudo-reality and pseudo-truth can be found everywhere.

But if we are forced to see it in the Church, it is always a trauma and we are
not happy at all!

NOTE

1) Concerning the relics of oriental saints kept in Venice, Corrain confessed that, at least,
half of them are very dubious, that is, false. Another example: the relics of
Saint Tharasios, which the venetian Catholic Curia considers as those of the patriarch
of Constantinople, actually belong to a simple monk. These relics (fake!) were given to the patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew (in the framework of
friendly Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical relations), as if they belonged for sure to the Patriarch of Constantinople saint Tharasios. Even in this case there are
specific studies that prove what I just said.

5 commenti:

These kinds of things remind me of what sociologists of religion (who are critical of religions) find common to all religions, and that is that a religion is an attempt of the elite to control the masses by any means necessary. And i am deeply saddened by that.

Christianity shouldn't be like that. Yes, there must be a hierarchy, but the hierarchy should seek the absolute good of their subjects and love them as Christ loves them, not treat them like mass of mindless animals. It seems as if the higher clergy are thinking to them selves: "Well the common people are stupid and we don't care...".

Yes, you are right, in the end the Church (which is made for Heaven) falls into its hierarchy over very contingent and earthly things. You have to think that even monks know the existence of pseudo-relics and recognize them in their own way (ie without the use of scientific methods but with the intuition of charismatic men).Part of the Orthodox clergy is now secularized. So this clergy assumes thoughtful ways of thinking and falls into scary naivete. If they had a profound spiritual life, it would not be so and would minimize such painful situations. Unfortunately, worldly thought is entering the Catholic Church and reigning (despite praiseworthy exceptions); In the Orthodox Church is trying to get wide. And we see it through these things as well.Thank you for your attention.

Yes, this is true! They have transformed the Church from a place of prayer (At the time of the Apostles the deacons were in charge of the services to leave the priests to prayer!) in a world of business. I see everywhere this! Certainly in this story if there is no business, there is at least endless ingenuity! God's fear is present in a heart that has Grace. A person who does not have Grace does not fear ...